Thursday, 4 April 2013

I celebrated Easter Sunday last week by appearing on Meet the Press with fellow-blogger and good friend, Kim Berry from All Consuming.

The quality of the video is not great. I can't afford decent videotaping staff on my bloggers wage.
There's a few things at play here, concurrently. (See the exact moment I saw my double chin on the monitor at 1minute 23 seconds.)

The question I get asked a lot is, WHY would the Prime Minister reach out to people in the online space. (We're getting close to, actually - why would she NOT?)

I'm not a soft touch. I'm a swinging voter. The 2013 Federal Election will go down in history as one of the most polarising of all time. Who do you hate more, Gillard or Abbott? Both people provoke such emotion in people. Julia Gillard is loathed and admired at the same time. My toe dipped into the political water recently has made one thing very clear: people go CRAZY when it comes to politics. I never realised how many disenfranchised men out there had such huge mummy issues. I think it's incredibly unfair that Gillard gets routinely annihilated in the media. And where's Tony Abbott in all of this? Tony, you won't answer my calls ..... what do you mean when you say, "Abortions should be rare." Like a steak? What IS your stance on women's bodies? Will my body be my own, if you are elected in September? Enquiring minds need to know.

My grandfather Squizzy always said never talk politics or sport at the dinner table. He was also a complete Aussie larrakin. He fought for this country, and was a prisoner of war in a German camp TWICE because he escaped. He was traumatised when he came back from the war, and went on to have a big family with my grandmother. Six children, my mother the eldest, really hard times for them all. Australia is such a beautiful, lucky, amazing country. We don't know how good we have it - in India they don't have enough toilets. Armed men roam countries of Africa like it's the most normal thing in the world. And Syria, man ..... who gives a shit about Syria at this point?

I want good government. I want a leader that I can trust. Is that too much to ask? Why are we all so jaded? Could it be that Prime Minister Julia Gillard is changing and evolving as a leader, one who is making the right decisions for Australia on the world stage? I'm busy raising the next generation. I'm also worried about what recent Centrelink changes mean to single parents. I worry about climate change, my mental health, my kids schools, my husband staying in remission from cancer. I think a lot of politicians bank on the average Aussie being dumb and too busy wrapped up in their own lives to really care about who gets elected in September. I care. Plenty of people around me care. Rupert Murdoch is not playing fair and it feels like everything is staged and rigged. Fuck Rupert.

So that's why I went on Meet the Press .... to represent the online space, the bloggers, the mothers. Same with Kim. Seriously, Kim and I are actually two fruitcakes. But we are real, we care, we found ourselves in this weird position, so we just kept saying yes.

I got called stupid a lot as a kid so I have real issues around people thinking I am. I'm not stupid. Neither are tens, hundreds of thousands of Aussies out there.

So stop treating us like we are.

::

EDITED: "And this is why you shouldn't" (IF that is their real name) .... has left a brilliant comment below, in regards to why the PM has reached out to bloggers. Articulated stuff that I haven't. Would love to hear peoples views, disagreements, thoughts. (And I really hope people can stay civil!)(Saying "Fuck Rupert" isn't very civil. I'm just cranky at the thought of tabloid newspapers ruining democracy.)PS Also, I don't actually receive a bloggers wage. Neither does Kim.